About a fortnight later, on Saturday June 18, Caroline Finch was on passage to St Helier, in Jersey, on one leg of her extended crew training passage to station; she was under the command of Christopher Price, deputy divisional inspector of lifeboats for the South West.

A light breeze was blowing from the east and the sea was slight.

At 1220, while passing the Casquets, a group of rocks seven miles west of Alderney Breakwater, the Brede received a message by VHP radio from the trawler Lady Crab, which was within sight, to say that her engines had broken down. As there was no other vessel available to help, and as the tide would have carried the trawler on to the Casquets, the lifeboat took her in tow to St Peter Port, Guernsey, arriving at 1530, before continuing her passage to St Helier..